Moving the contents of a one bedroom, a cat and a car …
Options:
Rent a truck with car dolley … but driving thru LA and in SF doesn’t sound like much fun!
Drive both rental truck and car … might be an advantage with the cat
Use a Pod (or equivalent) and drive car … kind of leaning this way unless the cost is prohibitive. I tried to get a quote on-line but it said “call us” .
Question: do you have to get the truck back to Phoenix? If so, #2 sounds like the best option - of course, that involves either:
(a) three Phoenix-to-SF-length drives (and I have been told that, while going through LA is the shortest distance, hitting the LA traffic at the wrong time doesn’t make it the quickest route, although the one viable alternative might not be a good idea with a truck),
(b) having somebody with you to drive the car while you drive the truck (or vice versa), then having to drive the truck back, and then presumably flying from Phoenix to SF,
or © paying somebody to drive the truck back to Phoenix for you…and then worrying that whomever you hired didn’t steal the truck.
Side question: what part of the SF area?
State Route 58 (Barstow then over the mountain through Tehachapi to State Route 99 at Bakersfield) is not a bad drive. You might give that a thought.
It depends on what area of SF you’re talking about. But you shouldn’t have to go through LA proper in order to get to Northern California; as stated above you can take 10 -> 15 -> 58 -> 99 or 5. If you’re heading to the south or east bay (San Jose and Oakland, respectively) you wouldn’t have to go through SF proper at all.
I used a pod, but from a different company than the POD people. It was expensive ($2500 for a 6x8x7 pod), and you really do need to tie your stuff down, but it was extremely convenient. They drop off the pod, you fill it up and call them, and they pick it up and drop it off at your new place on the day you’ve scheduled. Then you empty it, call them back and they come pick it up again.
For me the pod and a plane ticket were all of my moving expenses since I wasn’t bring a car so it wasn’t too bad. Not one single thing was broken when I unpacked it, and they showed up exactly when they were supposed to for both the drop and return. If you have pets and a car I would send your stuff in a pod and make it into a nice road trip.
I moved to the Bay Area from Dubuque a year and a half ago, and rented a 10’ truck and a tow dolly to pull my car. The price ended up being about what moejoe said for a pod, and was considerably less convenient. Do you have a place to land here in the Bay Area already set up, or are you going to arrive looking for a hotel to stay in while you look for an apartment? If that’s the case, I’d definitely recommend the pod.
If you wanted to take the “scenic” route, you could even stay on 58 all the way to U.S. 101. That would be quite a drive though – The portion from 99 (at Bakersfield) or I-5 (somewhere near Buttonwillow), over the mountain to 101, is long and mountainous and winding. And scenic.
Perhaps you’ve noticed a link I’ve posted occasionally, showing a photo of the place I used to live. That is just off of Rte. 58, a few miles into the outback there.
Thanks all! Answers …
the truck would be a rental so I don’t have to get it back to Phoenix
there will be a place to land by that time
no specifics on the destination yet but somewhere between Santa Clara and SF.
